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RogueyWon writes "In an interview with gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Ubisoft has announced that it will no longer use always-online DRM for its PC games. The much-maligned DRM required players to be online and connected to its servers at all times, even when playing single-player content. This represents a reversal of Ubisoft's long-standing insistence that such DRM was essential if the company were to be profitable in the PC gaming market."
The full interview has a number of interesting statements. Ubisoft representatives said the decision was made in June of last year. This was right around the time the internet was in an uproar over the DRM in Driver: San Francisco, which Ubisoft quickly scaled back. Ubisoft stopped short of telling RPS they regretted the always-online DRM, or that it only bothers legitimate customers. (However, in a different interview at Gamasutra, Ubisoft's Chris Early said, "The truth of it, they're more inconvenient to our paying customers, so in listening to our players, we removed them.") They maintain that piracy is a financial problem, and acknowledged that the lack of evidence from them and other publishers has only hurt their argument.

they are going to force you to hook up a electrical cord to your mouse (fees for cord seperate from game) if they think you are pirating software they shock you. Sure, logically, anyone who has the special hardware would also have the game, but piracy is killing there sales and online DRM wasn't working so someone needs to do something.

Maybe they wont go that far, but i suspect the logic will not change, just the system.

Their DRM hasn't prevented me from enjoying their games. It's their shitty beta level release code. Splinter Cell: Conviction didn't work until months after release. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier didn't work until months after release. Despite buying GR:FS, I played the scene release version a week before the game was out. It installed fine, ran ok and didn't crash once. Then when it was released on steam, I uninstalled scene release and downloaded the steam version. It didn't want to install. It finally ran

Considering how consumer unfriendly this company has been I don't blame you friend. And is this gonna apply to new titles only, or are they stripping it from previous games? Because there were several Ubisoft titles on Steam I would have bought if it weren't for the always on DRM. If they are gonna strip it from everything great, all for it, if not it'll be a royal PITA still to buy any of their titles because you'll have to search the fine print to see if its pre, during, or post douchebaggery.

True, but at least it's an indication that they might move in the right direction. I'll be happy if they prove it before the Wii U comes out so I can remove them from my Ban list and buy ZombieU. I've been missing out on things like Assassins Creed and other thing over the years because of their DRM so I'll just be glad it's over if they follow through.

While its true that they've been putting out titles with $50-$60 price tags that are getting reviews in line with $30 budget titles I still have to wonder how big of a dent in their wallet the always online DRM really caused.

I mean think about it, not only do you have this huge amount of bad will from your customer, you're paying for all these servers, bigger pipes than they would normally need, every connection issue becomes a PR nightmare, its just not good business.

Seems like most companies that should be in theory creating content, they put far more effort into squeezing every last dime they can from what they've already created than they do actually creating. To the point of being counterproductive.

Movies, it's not just DRM. Making a good movie comes second if that to marketing the movie.

I'd guess, having never worked in such an industry, that the suits making these decisions are more likely to listen to other suits pushing DRM or marketing than they are t

Ironically, piracy could have hurt them. Someone pirates a copy, finds out it's crap, and deletes it, when he may have gone out and bought a copy if it was any good. This is what many so-called pirates do; it isn't about being cheap, it's about not wanting to be ripped off by crap. The first time you get ripped off by a shitty $50 game you wouldn't have paid ten for, you're going to want to test drive the next one before buying.

You would think these people would learn from history, the same thing happened t

It's the principle of the matter and it follows logically from the following axioms:1. I will not purchase DRM'd content from Ubisoft because I refuse to support Ubisoft's DRM scheme.2. I will not pirate games because studios see it as cause for ever more restrictive DRM.

Therefore I cannot, in good conscience, purchase or pirate Ubisoft games.

Though I agree that there may be a few games I'll buy if this actually happens.

Well GOG has a selection of Ubisoft games [gog.com] with no DRM of course, so you can still buy some Ubisoft games without the BS. I bought FC 2 from them...its sucks ass BTW. The worst AI I'd seen in years, which after how damned crafty the AI was in FC 1 was a major let down.

Oh and for the Linux guys there is even a page listing the games that work on Linux [gog.com] so GOG has something for everybody, DRM free and great prices to boot. Great place to get some games.

Oh I could pirate if I really wanted. But I do like the settlers series. See it's the whole principal of the thing, the whole idea that the DRM is so bad that I won't even pirate it should be key as well.

Sure, they "get it" all right. People roll over for software activation now because companies like Ubisoft have won a place for it by threatening something worse and then relenting. The damage is done though - the sea change in DRM came with activation, that's when you gave up ownership of your media, quibbles over when and how often you need to activate are a straw man that they've thrown out in the (successful) hope that people will parrot crap like, "Well, I only need to activate once. That's nothing, lo

Diablo II is twelve years old, not decades, and did not require activation. Are you talking about the key needed to log in to Battle.net? I don't think there has ever been an expectation that by purchasing a copy of Diablo II you also gained ownership of Blizzard's online service. You're really stretching the meaning of a plausible interpretation here.

A better example might have been the WON authentication for Half-Life, where you needed to authenticate with valve in order to log into a third party's serv

Finally somebody starts to get it. When you make it more convenient to pirate the game than to pay for it there's something badly wrong.

On top of that, DRM eats away at their revenue for each year that they support their customers. For example, if I install Spore right now, EA has to have some server somewhere grant me access to it. They pay people to code that service, maintain the servers, and man the phones for the cases that go wrong or if I go through too many activations.

I really don't understand why they think this is a viable alternative especially when they cannot actually point to an empty bank vault where a bunch of money is mi

You are wrong. EA only has to keep the servers running for Spore for as long as they like, which is likely to be as long as it's making them money. They have no requirement to keep the servers going indefinitely.

The fact that it took testing to prove what should have been expected is the sad part.

That my friend, is the scientific process. Can't fault them for that. As much as I agree that this is too little too late I don't think if I was some mid-senior level employee at a multinational multimillion dollar business that I would make a decision on this scale without a focus group to blame it on. That's a problem with business in general and not just Ubisoft.

Though they still suck it, and how, I'll reserve my excitment until I see a little more headway in the right direction from them in the for

Not mentioned anywhere that I could find. Though it was asked in one of the comments on RPS. If Ubisoft DOES patch their older properties, then myself (like others, possibly) will be willing to look at some of their older games. I'd certainly be interested in trying out Settlers, as Civilization V was an effing bad joke.

I abstained from purchasing V, so I can't say from firsthand knowledge... but I followed and participated in numerous threads on civfanatics.com; had many conversations with long-time modders, and fans of CIV4... and watched countless threads on civfanatics devolve into haters vs defenders. The most amusing part being that the defenders would always claim that "this is how it always

I think that's entirely the point. DRM or no DRM does not affect the piracy rate but it DOES impact the end-user. If the end-user's experience is affected by something that does not affect the illegitimate users then they need to re-evaluate their goals. There are extra costs in development and overhead with the implementation of DRM which must be factored into the ROI. It appears they are coming to the realization that their implementation negatively affects the end-user experience, impression of their brand, and does not provide any additional sales (which is the whole point, really) so they're on the wrong end of that ROI.

The people who are pirating will probably keep pirating, but it's not because of some other justification. It's because the vast majority of them are in a country or culture where it's the norm.

To countries like Armenia [tumblr.com], they don't even consider that there is DRM in a game at retail because they usually are acquiring it via bootleg salesmen or pirated downloads. It's as if the DRMed game never existed.

And that's why the one, two, and sometimes three or more layers of DRM doesn't do anything but hurt the customers in the culture where paying is the social norm.

I'm not sure if you mean Armenia when you say "the laws here," but in the US the piracy rate is 20% and is the lowest in the world. Similar western nations also have relatively low rates of piracy. If 20% of a people are observed not doing a given thing, I'd say that's not really the norm at all.

Unfortunately, because of the ubiquity of the internet Ubi and similar publishers believe they cannot make a distinction between US customers who may be willing to pay and Armenian pirates who never even consider pa

Sorry, I was referring to the grandparent article [tumblr.com]. However, the original statistic was cited from this report [nationmaster.com] which sorts software by piracy. That's where Armenia is listed as the highest country at 93% and the US is the lowest at 20%. The same list gives a weighted international piracy average of 59.9%, which is high, but is much lower than the 90% that is making the rounds in the press and the number that you gave in your discussion of matchmaking, etc (citation, btw?).

Riiiight, that is why Valve is completely broke...oh wait, they are backing money trucks up to GabeN's place so he can fill his swimming pools with $100 bills.

I'd suggest you watch this video by Jim Sterling [escapistmagazine.com] where he says Sony is practically begging for piracy to go nuts on the Vita, why? Because they refuse to compete with the pirates and instead make actually paying them more of a PITA than just using BT to get the thing.

Valve has shown by using classical business 101 you CAN not only make a damned good living on PC games but even turn some, not all mind you but you'll never get all, of those pirates into actual paying customers. Myself and all of my friends used to pirate like crazy, now none of us have bothered in years...why? Classical business 101, make it simple, make it cheap, make it convenient. Why should I bother hunting down a BT on TPB, risking some malware or zero day infecting my machine, when with Steam I can just whip out my CC and have the game in under 3 minutes WITH all the DLC, WITH the MP, WITH the ability to pop up a chat window and get my friends in the game, and all at dirt cheap prices?

Too many corps have forgotten classical business 101 and instead are trying to anally rape as many dollars as they can get out of each individual and on top of that they wear a spiked condom called DRM. I wish I'd thought to save the page but in an article with Valve one of the guys pointed out when they slapped L4D on there at $2 a pop just to see what kind of sales they would get they made something like 1700% PROFIT on the game, why? Because digital means no shelves or boxes and the cost of shipping bits is very low so they were able to make out like bandits because they found at under $10 games quickly become impulse buys and people that might not even like the genre will pick it up at that price.

So I have to agree with Mr Sterling, don't blame the pirates, blame the retarded companies for refusing to compete. We humans are lazy creatures and will happily pay for products that meet classical business 101 rules, cheap, easy, and convenient, but these companies simply refuse to pull their heads out of their asses to see the kind of money you can make by doing things that make it easy for them to give you their money. Thank the FSM we have Valve so at least ONE company does get it.

Eh.... I wouldn't be so quick to say. Especially if one is to believe that piracy is around 93%+ like they (?) claimed the other week. I mean, sure, the lion's share will still pirate. However, if even 5% of people are pirating because got sick of having to deal with the DRM and/or crack it anyways, that would represent a relatively significant sales boost. Not to mention it may cut down on perceived piracy because less buyers would be downloading cracked versions (though this depends on how they are me

People will pirate every game, that's for sure. But in the end of the day, what matters is how many will find some justification to buy it. And being less of an ass to your clients will make it easier for them to justify giving you money.

...to pirate. This will make no difference in the piracy rate, but it's nice for their user base.

I doubt it, Ubisoft makes some really crappy games. I tend to pirate everything that comes out (always have, not to keep, but to check out whats going on) and I find most ubisoft games to suck badly to not be worth the download time.

Piracy numbers don't really count for much any way it makes no difference to the bottom line if there is 1 or a 100 million pirate copies (although if people do not want the game for free then realistically it is never going to be a commercial success). If you consider zynga many people playing their games do not pay but they do encourage other people to play and some of those will pay even if it's just to catch up with their friends.

You realize that requires the argument be made that none of XYZ do ABC, which is then followed by "But this one XYZ does ABC", and then following that up with "No *true* XYZ does ABC".

What is a "true pirate"? These "cheap bastards" fit the criteria of a 'pirate' regardless of their motivation. The person above mentioned "true pirates" as if anyone not like them isn't a "true pirate." They don't have to explicitly say "No *true* XYZ does ABC," either.

I wouldn't claim that there all no pirate would pirate to save money

I saw where you (or the person who posted that) were going with that, but I did not care for that particular phrase. I'd drop the "true pirate" part.

On the contrary, there will be more satisfied paying customers. Piracy rates may even go up, but their customer base will increase, which in the long run is the more pertinent of the two figures as far as Ubisoft should be concerned. More customers means were money. Saying that it'll make no difference to the actual piracy rate is ridiculous and irrelevant.

But the piracy rate itself is irrelevant. It's only the number of sold copies that matters. If the sales double and the piracy goes up tenfold, that is a big win.

DRM serves to inconvenience legitimate users and does little to stop pirates: all it takes is one smart cow [wikipedia.org] to open the gate and all the other cows can follow.

Steam seems to provide a good service to game sellers and players: reasonable DRM to reduce casual piracy while not being hideously obnoxious (you only need to be online once to activate the game, after that you can play offline), fast downloads, decent anti-cheating protection for multiplayer games, frequent sales, millions of regular viewers (so promotions are more effective), automatic updates, very simple click-to-buy procedure without any hassle, etc. Why wouldn't game developers sell games on Steam rather than creating their own obnoxious systems?

How casual? If they seriously cannot apply a crack, I highly doubt they can figure out how to use Steam.

But I don't believe "reasonable DRM" exists, anyway. Steam itself would be okay if you could optionally detach the games from it so that you could run them without it, but not being able to do so is what makes it DRM.

Civ V is the only Steam game I have that I play in 'single player' mode. I was curious about if I would be able to play the game without having an internet connection because the game launches through Steam.

I d/c'd my internet connection one day before booting up the computer. Then I tried to load Civ V. It sat there for about 2 minutes (normally just a few seconds) before finally giving me a dialog box along the lines of "internet detection could not be found. Would you like to play in off-line mode?

As far as I know, though, you still have to run Steam to play the games. I'm aware of offline mode, and I certainly think Steam is better for having it, but having to run Steam is still undesirable for me.

"Casual" in the "here's a DVD-R or ISO of the game disc and a keygen, just install it" sense.

Sure, various cracking groups have cracked Steam DRM for quite a few games. They always will, and I'm sure Valve (and others) take it into consideration. There's always some group of people who will never pay for anything, but there's nothing effective that one can do about that.

Steam provides a decently-priced integrated marketplace for games from a variety of producers. They have well-connected download servers al

Are you certain? While they by no means need to be able to do more in-depth things (like someone who simply drives a car doesn't need to be able to put one together), I'd at least think they should learn how to properly operate a computer.

Even just moving a file from folder to folder fills them with dread.

Usually you learn how to drive a car properly before you attempt to drive a car, but I guess people don't even bother applying that here.

I think you are falling into the trap of thinking you are familiar with something that you are not.

I just have trouble believing that such people could even figure out how to work an installer. I guess they can, though; what a shame th

Steam is the less evil of the game stores DRM. I know that something like digital goods resale will need legislation because it will not fix by itself (I want transfers because I always gave my old games to younger family member), but the worst thing that bothers me is not allowing than others family play my games installed using my account, on my machine, using their own Steam users, at least give us subaccounts or something like that. The console ecosystems (at least the PS3) allow other people to play ga

I was playing Portal2, and my wife wanted to play something like Braid. They were two single player 'offline' games. When she pulled up the other computer Steam pitched a fit because I was already logged in on another machine.

Two games, purchased independently of each other, irrevocably tied to each other and blocked from 'simultaneous' usage.

It bugged me on a personal level, because it was the first time I ever got my wife to try out a video gam

Why wouldn't game developers sell games on Steam rather than creating their own obnoxious systems?

Some of them don't care for the model. Some of them don't want to incur the extra costs of Steam. Some of them have contractual obligations. But primarily, companies don't want to lose control of their distribution method.

It's like asking why companies don't want to put their app on the Android Market/Google Play, and why other marketplaces exist. Putting all their eggs in one basket is risky.

Why wouldn't game developers sell games on Steam rather than creating their own obnoxious systems?

There are some rare cases when they have no choice but to do so.

For instance, Mac game publishers are oftentimes entirely separate companies that license the rights to create a Mac port of a game from the original Windows publisher. Since Steam does not have any way to meaningfully distinguish between Mac and Windows gamers at the time of purchase, they only allow a single company to receive payment for each purchase made...including on SteamPlay titles that include both Mac and Windows versions of the game

Basically offer a good product, at reasonable price, that is very easy to obtain. Add just enough DRM you discourge any casual pirating. Heck even the 1990's solution of a code wheel was/is sufficent.

Someone that is prepared to put effort into pirating your software IS going to pirate your software one way or another. However that is besides the point, as that person is very unlikely to ever buy it anyway. So while it might make you angry, it isn't really affecting anything really.

Why wouldn't game developers sell games on Steam rather than creating their own obnoxious systems?

Valve takes about 30% of a cut of game sale. Now factor in DLC, in which they take their cut again and developers HAVE to use Steam for DLC when a game is sold on Steam. EA wanted to sell DLC directly to customers via an in-game store and Valve said no no no, we want a piece of that pie too. It gets pretty expensive for a company like EA who has alot of franchises and DLC when using Steam, hence they spent

I can't have 2 games on one account, and sell one of them to somebody else without transferring ownership of the account, including the other game.

Actually, I don't think you're correct on this one. I can't remember exactly how it occured, I think through the orange box, but I had bought HL2 and ended up with another copy of it through a bundle purchase. Lo and behold, I have it listed in my giftable copies. Therefore, duplicate copies of games can be gifted to other accounts.

I love when companies try to force new ideas that are obviously flawed, based solely on some projections and high ups getting creamy over their great idea to end piracy. Instead of getting anything out of this DRM strategy, they just look like dicks.

You are depriving me of the gasoline in the tank that you used while driving.

You are depriving me of road wear on my tires and brakes. And in my case, the clutch too.

And it was stolen even if you return it before I want it again. I am deprived of the ownership of the car while you have stolen it.

Now...if you had a maker bot that could print up a 3D copy of a car, and you filled it with your own gasoline and put on your own tires and brakes etc...then I would be 100% ok with that. Sure, make a copy of my

I bought Assassin's Creed 2 on sale a while back, even downloaded it a few weeks ago, but only recently tried to play it.

Holy crap, did it take forever. First it had to install roughly twenty million different runtimes and libraries. Then it had to install some "UPlay" bullshit. Then that had to update itself, despite having been just installed. Then it had to "update" the game, something I would have thought Steam would do automatically (I'd bet money that someone at Ubisoft had to actually force Steam to not update it, rather than it being some failing on Steam's side).

After waiting about twenty minutes for this all to go on, I gave up. Cancelled it out, started a different game ("Stacking") and was in-game within a minute.

Yeah, them getting rid of their pointless DRM is good even if all it changes is how long it takes to start playing.

Now if only EA would actually learn to let their customers access the DLC they paid for without going through more hoops than the average basketball...

That's not the only game to try something like that. Battlefield 2 tried to install Gamespy Comrade, but I found you can cancel out of the installation, but it will continue on. It still tries to install it every time, but I can just deny the UAC prompt for the installer and be on my way.

Steam actually mentions when third-party DRM is required. For example, with Anno 2070 they mention in the description "3rd-party DRM: Solidshield Tages SAS3 machine activation limit". I intentionally avoid games that have this.

Due to their past transgressions, I will still never buy an Ubisoft game. I'm sure they will consider my lack of purchasing as piracy instead of voting with my wallet, but I don't care. Companies need to learn that years of treating your paying customers with contempt will take a LONG time for people to get over, even when the company finally starts to do the right thing.

It's never too late for me... I swore I'd never buy an Ubisoft game while the DRM was so obnoxious so I didn't. And unlike others, I didn't pirate. I just didn't play their games. Now that they've focused more on the paying customer experience (and my personal inability to insure I had internet access at all times) I can again look at their library of games.

I mean it's not like they killed people or something. It's a business decision.

Produce a game I want to play, and make it a program that I don't cringe as I try to install it.

It's not hard. Hundreds of them are on my PC at the moment. I don't think there's a single Ubisoft one among them (except some really old games before they started bundling pure shit along with their shitty games and trying to sell it for full price).

The DRM doesn't stop the pirates.The DRM does stop me.

If it's taken you this long to listen, believe and understand what people have been saying to you for YEARS, I see no reason to reward your years of ignorance now.

And no, I haven't pirated any of their titles either. I prefer to undermine my arguments in an ethical manner.

I use pirated software often when I also have purchased a legitimate copy. Pirated games don't demand always-on connections, having the CD/DVD in the drive, or non-bypassable giant logos that display for 30 seconds. When I launch a pirate game, I get the game, and that's all I want.

I did something similar to this once. I pre-ordered Super Mario Galaxy 2 and had it shipped to my home. Problem was that it would be delivered two days after launch. My solution was to download the torrent and play it while waiting for my disc to come.

I have always wondered how these companies would react to such behavior by customers.

Why this announcement now? There were some interesting titles I would have bought one year ago, but not with these DRM constrains. Now it is too late. I have ditched ubi back when they started getting anal with their DRM.

I only have one UBISoft game - Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition. Instead of CD's, it is a 2G download. It is only a few years old, but suprisling enough it has NO DRM AT ALL. No license keys, no activation codes, no other bullshit. Install it just like any GOG game. I purchased it from their official website so I am assuming it is legit. It almost seems impossible - perhaps the guy who forgot to install the DRM got fired afterwards...

My problem with Origin is that EA wants to use it as their exclusive distribution platform and avoiding it isn't necessarily possible.

For example, I picked up Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 on sale on Steam. If I want to play Mass Effect 3 (and have a carryover playthrough), I must now get the Origin regardless if I go through a digital distribution or buy the game from the store.

The problem is when the user has to use two or more online accounts. If you register a game at Steam, you shouldn't have to create yet another account with $publisher and register there too. One place and one user name / password should be enough.Having to remember twenty user name / passwords and keep all the accounts updated for twenty different games becomes a chore.

If you register a game at Steam, you shouldn't have to create yet another account with $publisher and register there too. One place and one user name / password should be enough.

In an ideal world this would be true. Unfortunately Steam (nor Origin) run multiplayer servers, this is handled by the publishers or studios, or less and less the community. Servers use proprietary and/or undocumented protocols. To cite some examples: Rockstar games have a user account which you need to create to make use of some features such as online play. Some games use GFWL (Games For Windows Live) (Fallout 3).

Having to remember twenty user name / passwords and keep all the accounts updated for twenty different games becomes a chore.

You could always make them the same;). I have user accounts and passwords galore so you're n